Belgravia Blues
by The Orange Lady
Summary: A woman is found dead. Sherlock's been back for a while, and things are still a bit awkward. John can't help to identify with the case and feelings get out of hand. Slowbuilding, rated T for safety.
1. Prologue

(Hello again! Starting on a new series, even though I'm still finishing up the last one. This is going to contain mild slash _eventually_...so don't give up on me just yet! Read, enjoy, review!)

**A BRIEF PROLOGUE**

Anita Perkins killed herself by shooting herself in the head. The bullet entered in her right temple, cut through the frontal lobe, exited just above her left ear and then finally lodged itself in the wall of her living room.

A neighbour who heard the gun go off alerted the police, and Ms Perkins was still sitting in her chair when they arrived at the scene.

There was no evidence of foul play. No signs of other people having been present, the blood spatter was consistent, and the 9 millimetre bullet that the technicians dug out of the wall matched the small handgun found by Ms Perkins feet.

And yet D.I. Lestrade was not satisfied. Something was not right, something he couldn't put his finger on. He sat on the sofa, which had previously been cleared by the forensic team, and stared at the dead woman. She did not give him any answers.

The case was supposed to be simple: suicide, no complications. And yet it didn't sit well with him. Lestrade knew what to do, even if it irked him to no end. He reached for his phone.


	2. Chapter 1

**CHAPTER ONE**

_In which there is a new case and a quite existential cab ride._

John was spending the night in his armchair by the fireplace reading a study on posttraumatic stress disorder. It wasn't really for himself, but for a patient he had taken on at the surgery. Sarah had transferred the woman to him, even though he wasn't working there anymore. He couldn't say no, mostly because he there was no way he could say no to Sarah, but also because felt oddly drawn to help the poor woman. She was a Palestinian refugee and had been in crossfire only a few months back, and John felt he could relate to her and even possibly be of help.

He had diagnosed himself to be cured a few years back, but in the wake of the affliction he found it absolutely fascinating to read about it, to immerse himself in the facts of the disorder he knew so well from first hand experience.

That was when he heard Sherlock's phone ring in the kitchen. It almost rang out, but was picked up at last second, just before it went to voicemail. There was a muffled conversation and a few seconds later the detective practically bounced into the room and beamed at the bewildered doctor.

"It's a suicide! Everything is in order! Lestrade has a hunch!"

He swooshed out, and John heard him stomp down the stairs and slam the front door behind him. A few seconds later it was opened again, and then Sherlock was back. He grabbed his coat, which he had forgotten in his excitement, and glanced over at John.

"Are you coming, or are you going to sit there all night with your stupid papers?"

"It is one o'clock in the morning. I've got work tomorrow. I'm not going to run around town tonight because of a suicide. And it's not a stupid paper!"

He was met with a pointed stare and a slightly elevated eyebrow, and he knew he couldn't argue with that.

"It's about PTSD. You remember that woman I'm helping?" he continued in a bargaining tone, and then sighed deeply. "Alright. Fine. Let me get my coat."

"Where are we going?" John asked when they had climbed into the cab.

"Belgravia. A middle-aged woman was found dead by the police. A single shot to the head, nice and clean."

Sherlock showed him a close-up picture of the dead woman on his phone that Lestrade had sent him, and John felt vaguely nauseous.

"Why are we going if there has been no crime?"

"Why, John, why? It's Belgravia!" Sherlock huffed at him, frustrated. "It's a nice neighbourhood. People who can afford living there are well off, and usually have neat and well-organized lives. Suicides in such places usually have fascinating causes. It's almost never due to depression or the like. If people like that get depressed they simply get the best psychiatrist they can find or they go to their other house in southern France for a while. No, it's always more complex! And if it isn't a suicide, it can be a very intricate murder. You have no idea how far this set of people can go to ensure the demise of a loved one. Absolutely fascinating! I assume you remember Primrose Hill?"

"Yes, how could I possibly forget? It was like a twisted version of 'The Mysterious Affair at Styles'."

"No, it most certainly was not. I don't understand your irrational affection for Agatha Christie. That book was transparent. And just because they used the same poison doesn't mean the cases are alike."

Fourteen members of a small academic society had inexplicably fallen ill at a dinner party at Primrose Hill a few years back, after having been served a very nice and very lethal vintage of Merlot. The wine had in fact been poisoned several decades earlier and had been intended for a visit from the king of Sweden, which had been cancelled at last minute. The whole dinner party affair could have been written off as an accident, if it wasn't so that the host had been very aware of the high dose of strychnine that the wine contained.

"Anyways, Lestrade promised me thirty minutes undisturbed at the scene, but I doubt it will take me that long. I would appreciate if you would take a look as well. Check the medicine cabinet and so on. It might be helpful."

John nodded, of course he would help. Why else would he have come along? Well, it was the only reason, if you excluded the fact that Sherlock practically had bullied him into it.

He leaned his head against the cool window, and looked at the cars and the city that they drove by. He really liked going places in cabs with Sherlock. It was as if the confined space under lengthy periods of time made him more humble and prone to consideration of other people's feelings. He was fairly sure that it was genuine, and not some ploy to get them both out of the cab emotionally intact. After being compared to a skull on a regular basis and their everyday life in general it was always quite refreshing to get to see this more humane aspect of his friend.

Things had changed considerably after Sherlock's supposed death and resurrection, The Reichenbach Affair, as John had named it in his head. When there was something going on Sherlock always made sure to ask if he was coming along, as if he couldn't be certain. At first John liked the change, but quickly came to doubt the reasons behind it. Deep down he knew that it was Sherlock's stunted way of apologizing for disappearing for three years, but at the same time he couldn't shake the feeling that he had stopped counting on him. It gnawed at his soul to be invited, and not to be back in their previous partnership. He missed the wild and frustrating spontaneity of those pre-Reichenbach days, but knew that they were long gone.

John had carefully constructed a barrier against certain feelings concerning the detective when he died. Feelings that he then realized had been there for a long time, but had never been acknowledged. But it had simply been too painful to start poking at them, at that point. If John didn't think about it, then it could almost be as if it never where. It was hard, but ultimately it worked.

But then Sherlock came back, and of course that barrier came crashing down, leaving him raw and bleeding inwardly again, and ridiculously close to actually voicing some of his thoughts or doing something about it.

He glanced over at his friend, who was occupied with his phone, no doubt doing research on the dead woman that was waiting for them or terrorizing the Metropolitan police on other business. In the bluish light the detectives face was smooth and John wanted nothing more than to touch him right then, just to stroke his cheek. He did his best to hide it. And he did quite well. Practice makes perfect, he thought. It had been almost a year since Sherlock came back.


	3. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO**

_In which investigation is done and John is thinking of lost things._

When they arrived at the house in Belgravia a few policemen were waiting outside in the rain. Some were smoking or fiddling with their phones, their faces glowing ominously in the blue light. Sherlock flipped up the collar of his coat against the weather and did his best to look mysterious and cool. Old habits died hard, John figured, and he smiled to himself. But to be fair, it did work ridiculously well for him as it hid most of his face, but still somehow managed to bring out his cheekbones. And yet he knew that the detective only ever did that when he was around to see.

It really was a nice neighbourhood, just as Sherlock had said, and the yellow tape and the parked service vehicles seemed out of place in the tidy street. The white houses towered around them and John saw curtains twitching in the corner of his eyes. Of course people were watching.

"Upstairs," said a technician who John didn't recognize and nodded at them to enter the house. They did.

"Wasn't it around here we met Ms Adler the first time?" he asked while they were climbing the hardwood stairs, and turned to see Sherlock's expression. But if he had any deeper reaction to bringing up The Woman, he concealed it well. John damned the fact that he could never really figure out the impact Ms Adler had on him, and had the suspicion that it was an important key to some inner regions of Sherlock's brain.

"Almost. The house is three blocks away."

They were shooed into a large room, which contained a tired detective inspector and a dead woman. The work started the moment they entered. Sherlock started circulating the room and collecting data, and you could almost hear the machinery of his impossible brain tick and turn.

"The name is Anita Perkins, forty seven years old, mother of one. Divorced ten years ago, but still has a friendly relationship with her ex-husband," Lestrade grumbled from the sofa. "She's a lawyer, but also the owner of a successful import business, worth about twenty million pounds."

"Well, at least she wasn't starving. How did you know about the ex-husband?" asked John.

"She had him listed as her fucking ICE contact. You never pick the one you hate for that job, right? I called him, and he was shocked! They had dinner last week, apparently. Discussed business strategy and bloody football. Hard core hard fan of Chelsea, apparently. He went on and on about it."

Lestrade buried his face in his hands and sighed heavily. He looked to be in dire need of a good nights sleep, but John refrained from telling him that, as he probably was painfully aware of that himself.

Sherlock was crouching on the floor, first examining the body and then trying to figure out what Ms Perkins had looked at in her last moments. He was completely focused on the task before him. He scuttled over to the fireplace and started to ruffle around the objects and photographs that where carefully arranged on top of it.

John couldn't help but to notice how the soft light in the room made him look much younger, almost like when they had met the very first time. But death, however faked, had taken it's toll on both of them. Sherlocks return had been almost as hard as his disappearence. He was a changed man, not only mentally, but physically. John had made a point of feeding his prodigal flatmate whenever he got the chance, but months later Sherlock was still positively skeletal. The three years had left new lines around his eyes that made him look not only older, but more tired. When they were alone he was humble and quiet in a way that the old Sherlock wouldn't even have considered being, even for a case. It was awkward and infuriating, and John felt that it all in some way was his fault. On the surface everything might have seemed to be back in order, but fundamentally there was chaos. They never discussed it.

"…John! Since you're already here, would it be too much to ask for your attention? She was looking at something over here when she died! Maybe she had hidden something, but I can't find any hiding places. Well, she could have hidden things in the frames, but I…"

"Has it occurred to you that she maybe was looking at the pictures of her family?" John snapped.

Sherlock stared at him blankly.

"Most people are sentimental about their near and dear, you know. I would say it is very possible she looked at them when she…to say goodbye, in a way."

John hoped he would get it, because he knew he couldn't explain it further without tearing up and making an emotional scene out of it. He found it was hard to talk about. Sherlock had after all been talking to him on the phone and watching him as he had swan dived to his "death". And if he could fake suicide that well, surely he could understand the mechanics behind it. An ashamed and sorrowful look crossed Sherlock's face in a fraction of a second, but John saw it. He turned around to hide it, picked up the photos of Ms Perkins and her family to study them closer.

"John, could you check her dairy? It's probably on the desk. I'd like to know what she has been up to for the last three days," the detective continued in a tentative soft tone. "And, Lestrade, have you made contact with her son?"

"Yes, he's coming in soon," said D.I. Lestrade, handed John a sealed plastic bag in which a small moleskin notebook rested, and waved at him to go ahead and take it out.

"Okay, starting three days ago. November third: Board meeting concerning expansion in Germany in the morning. Lunch with C. Then meeting with staff. November fourth: chiropractor in the morning, then a distance conference. Lunch with C. Opera in the evening. November fifth: Meeting at the Argentinean embassy. Lunch with C. Who is this C? A boyfriend or something?"

"Don't know," said Lestrade and shrugged. "She's got thirty four contacts on her phone starting with C. Could be anyone of them."

"Well, whoever it is must be a close friend, considering they have met up at least four times every week for a few months. Maybe the son can tell us who it is when he gets here," said John and turned to the detective. "Alright, Sherlock, could you talk us through what happened here?"

"Anita Perkins went to work in the morning, as usual, and then had sushi for lunch at a high end restaurant with an anonymous friend, this C presumably. Then she went back to her office, signed her testament and headed home. She had French omelette for dinner. Then she obtained the gun from her desk, I'd think, and walked into her living room, sat down looking at the photographs of her son and what I presume to be his fiancée, and then shot herself through the head. She obviously planned this very carefully."

"No, that's not obvious to the rest of us. How did you know about the testament?" asked John, in awe. He would never get used to those sparkling deductive skills of his, and he would probably never tire of posing questions that made him look dim-witted in the eyes of his favourite detective. But he knew that deep down Sherlock liked it.

"Oh, John! It's impressive that a person like you can survive, let alone be a medical doctor, with that kind of ability for reasoning. Think!" said Sherlock, exasperated, and gesticulated wearily at the doctor and the detective inspector, as if they were idiots. "She's an educated woman, a lawyer; she lives a planned and well organized life. One day she decides to die. So what does she do? She buys a loaded gun, writes a testament and shoots her brains out. Of course she writes a testament! If you look at her fingers you'll find the remnants of drops of blue ink. You only get those when you refill certain makes of fountain pens. What kind of documents does a lawyer sign with her most fancy pen before she goes home and kills herself? Obvious! But the interesting question still remains: why? What happened to make her do it?"

(Bit of a cliffhanger, really… but I think we'll survive. Review, pretty please)


	4. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER THREE**

_In which the mysterious C speaks out and certain parallels arise._

"Let me through!" yelled a broken voice downstairs, and a young man appeared, closely followed by a girl. They were both dressed nicely in a smart suit and a blue cocktail dress, and John could smell cigarette smoke and expensive cologne from the distance.

"Are you Matthew Perkins? If you could step through here. I'm sorry, but we can't allow any bystanders at the scene. If you would wait outside for a while, miss…" said a police woman, and tried to stop the pair in the hallway.

"This is my fiancée, Caroline. Surely she can come in? I don't think I can do this without her right now..."

"We're going to be married in just a few weeks," Caroline managed fill in between her sobs. She was a blonde girl, and had the warm round face of someone who is genuinely goodhearted. Now she was crying and mascara was running down her face, but John could recognize that kind of goodness in a person at any time.

Then Sherlock pushed past him where he stood in the doorway, and for a heartbeat they were pressed flush together. The brief contact made John slightly breathless for a moment and trying to regain his composure. As they walked towards the couple John had eyes for his friend only. He tried to convince himself that he didn't see Sherlock's warm cheeks or flitting glances in his direction. Obviously the detective had noticed his idiotic little lapse, and it had made him uncomfortable. Great.

"Could we have some of your time? It would help immensely with shedding some light on this unfortunate situation," ventured the detective, but was elbowed hard in the side by John. Prudent as the request might have been, it was still a bit not good, considering. Grieving relatives wasn't really Sherlock's strong suit. People in general seldom were.

"My mother is dead in that room, and you want to interrogate to me? Who the fuck are you anyway?"

"I'm Sherlock Holmes, consultant detective to the…"

"Get out of my way!" the young man cried and forcibly pushed himself past the men and stumbled into the bloody living room. Seeing his dead mother made him retch immediately and then unceremoniously collapse on the floor. There was a commotion as they moved young Matthew Perkins to the bed in the next room and Caroline the fiancée had to be talked down from her hysterics.

John mastered the situation quickly. Grief and panic were things he was familiar with, courtesy of personal experience and his training as a military doctor, and he did his best to comfort the poor woman. He was really good with that sort of thing. He even handed her his handkerchief.

When he glanced up at Sherlock he hoped he would detect some gratitude, but was met with a black stare, which he would rather classify as distaste or perhaps jaundice. He couldn't understand it. His stomach lurched, and not in a good way. Had he done something wrong? Was he interfering with the investigation somehow?

"Better now?" he asked the woman, and she nodded, face still buried in the handkerchief, smearing mascara everywhere. "Mr Perkins will be alright in a minute, I promise."

"I can't believe it! She can't be dead. We had lunch today! I can't believe she wouldn't let me help her. She never told me that she was sad or anything. She was always so…so considerate. Why would she just…" She trailed off breathlessly, ready to burst out crying again.

Sherlock, however, jumped at the opportunity, and showed her the black moleskin dairy.

"I take it you have had lunch with Ms Perkins quite a lot as of late. Can you confirm that you are the C marked in here?" he asked impatiently.

Caroline took a quick look at the presented pages, and then nodded.

"We always had lunch a couple of times a week. I loved it. She always made time for me, even though she was so busy all the time. She said it was important to her to see that I was happy. Oh, I can't believe she is dead!"

She broke down tears again, and John put his arm around her unconsciously. He patted her bare shoulder soothingly, and did not look up at Sherlock for reassurance this time.

"Matthew and I had some trouble a while back, and I didn't know if I should break it off or stay with him. I was a mess! But Anita talked me through it. She said…she just said I was the loveliest and sweetest person in the world. That no matter what she'd be there for me. What ever I needed. She meant the world to me. I couldn't have done it without her."

"So you have no idea why she would kill herself?" Sherlock asked.

"No."

"Really? There were no financial problems? She wasn't seeing a psychiatrist? She wasn't in any relationships, no boy- or girlfriend?" he deadpanned.

"No! Not that I know of. Just no. And what do you mean girlfriend? Why would you ask things like that?"

"Well, she obviously was emotionally distressed, otherwise she wouldn't have killed herself. Are you sure that you don't know what happened to her over, lets say, the past month?"

"Matthew and I got back together three weeks ago, but I've told you that already. I don't know! I thought she was happy!"

"Maybe you weren't so close after all. Do you think that your fiancé, Mr Perkins, might know more about this?"

"How can you say things like that? She said I was her dearest friend and that she loved me…If I had known she'd…" She was getting close to tears again, and John felt physically ill about the detective's inquisition.

"I'm so sorry, Caroline. You don't need to answer that. My colleague can be somewhat insensitive sometimes. I'm really sorry about that," John apologized. "I need to have a word with him, right now. Are you alright by yourself for a while?"

She nodded, and John forcibly dragged said colleague out of the room.

"What the hell was that about? You can't interrogate her like that. She's in shock, damnit! She's mourning!" he hissed.

"Well, if they were as close as she says they were, she must know something about this that we don't! I'm just trying to solve this as quickly as possible. I need facts for that. I need to observe."

"Not like that, you don't. Lay off. Talk to her tomorrow, if you need to. You know, when she's calmed down a bit."

"Oh, that won't be necessary. I've got what I needed. I just need to put it together. Should I get a cab for us?" Sherlock said nonchalantly and picked up his phone.

"You do that. I'll be out in a moment. I just need to wrap up and tell Lestrade we're off."

Sherlock nodded and walked off. John watched him until he was out of sight, and when he finally was alone he took a deep breath. He always had an internal conflict at times like this, torn between his admiration for the Detectives brilliance in action and the mortification of his inability to relate to other people's tragedies. He waited a moment before he went back to the crime scene, to cool off. He waved goodbye to the forensic team, slapped D.I. Lestrade on the back, and finally gave Caroline the fiancée an awkward hug. She looked like she needed it. She had a long night ahead of her.

When he got out of the nice Belgravian house, the cab was already waiting for him on the street. He climbed in. He couldn't bear to even look at Sherlock, in case he would say or do something stupid, like hit him or confess his undying love or something. The case, however mundane and uneventful, had stirred his feelings. It had hit closer to home than he was comfortable in. The ride home was done in dead silence.

You see, for once John had figured out the "why" before Sherlock did. What he saw was unrequited love. He had seen it before. Anita Perkins must had fallen in love with the one and only woman she absolutely could not fall in love with. Caroline seemed to be a gentle soul, a true sweetheart, but as her future daughter in law she would be oh so unattainable.

There was an inevitability to it, he decided. People always wanted what they never could have. Of course he would fall in love with his best friend and colleague, the one man that was truly unattainable for him. Just like Anita Perkins and her daughter-in-law. The only difference was that she had decided that she couldn't live with it.

He decided not to tell Sherlock.

(Sorry for the wait, but life in general and school got in the way... Read and enjoy!)


	5. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER FOUR**

_In which certain facts are uncovered and honesty conquers all._

"Well, that wasn't so hard," concluded Sherlock out of the blue after three hours of silent contemplation and two nicotine patches.

"What?" said John, who had dozed off on the sofa. A bleak grey dawn glimpsed through the curtains, and he felt stiff and worn. His watch helpfully reminded him of that it was half past five in the morning.

"I don't believe that there was any foul play involved in this case. It really is a suicide. You see, the late Ms Perkins was in love with her soon to be daughter-in-law. Very much so, in fact. So much she would kill herself if the feeling wasn't mutual, only to leave her entire fortune to her intended."

"You mean that she was in love with Caroline? She's…"

"… A woman, yes."

"I was going to say betrothed to her son, and probably over twenty years younger."

"Ah, yes. The impossible infatuation."

"So you say Anita Perkins killed herself out of love?"

"In so many words: yes. She knew her love for Caroline would never be answered, and feeling she couldn't live without it she thought the best way out was death. By killing herself she leaves her son, and consequently her soon to be daughter-in-law, to inherit her company and her entire estate. It's one final grand gesture for her love. She takes the easy way out, and her loved one gets a fortune she can live on forever," said Sherlock and started wandering around the room, gesticulating. "A neat solution from a desperate person. But quite pointless, really."

"Pointless? How can you call it pointless? She died because she couldn't stand to live apart from Caroline. While it's sad that she died, it was her choice. You don't get to say things like that," said John. He was getting angry. For some ridiculous reason he felt that his feelings was being trampled upon.

"When she killed herself she eradicated any possibility of ever getting what she wanted. With some tact Ms Perkins easily could have secured a place in Caroline's heart. If not romantically, platonically. Life has a lot of potential, whereas death is the final end to all that," Sherlock mumbled, somewhat abashedly. "Death is never the answer when love is in question."

"What do you know about that? From what I know, you've never been in love. What gives you the right to judge other people like that?"

Sherlock said nothing, and stopped by the window with his back turned. His shoulders were tense, and he seemed to have shrunken a size or two.

"Look, I know you don't understand love and emotions like that," John continued. "But you just can't say it's all pointless. Yes, it is irrational sometimes. That's what love is. It's hard and confusing and people get hurt. But it's never pointless."

"Why are you so upset by this?" Sherlock asked quietly.

"Well, I can't help but to see certain parallels here. When you…when you were gone, I was fucking broken. I didn't have you here, I had no one. Just getting through the day was hard. Don't you think the thought crossed my mind? It would have been fucking convenient just to die. But I didn't, and I'm happy for that now. Because you came back. You are back, and I'm happy just to be with you. But sometimes that isn't enough."

"John," Sherlock managed in a strangled voice, before he was cut off.

"I can't help it. I know you are not a man made for love, and you have no interest in anything of the like. But I am none the less going to say this, and you can do what you want with it," John said and breathed heavily. He was doing this. "I love you."

Dead silence followed. John didn't know what he had expected.

"As a friend. And more. A lot more, in fact," he continued lamely, to clarify, as if he wasn't clear enough the first time. He felt tears sting his eyes, but did his best to keep his face straight. Sherlock went paler than usual, which was a feat considering his complexion, and wobbled over to the sofa where he sat down. They sat in silence for a while, and John gave up trying to compose himself.

"When…when exactly did you realize this?" asked Sherlock faintly.

"I don't now. It's been gradual, I think. I didn't realize until Reichenbach. And ever since you came back…" John trailed off. It was a lie, albeit a white one, he knew exactly when he had realized it. But you couldn't really tell someone that you realized your love at their own goddamned funeral. "I couldn't get it out of my head. It's been eating at me. And after this case, I…I just had to say it. It just hit to close to home. And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have cornered you with that. Can't you just do that thing you do, delete what I said?"

Sherlock was staring holes in the floor, and his face had turned a bright red, which John decided had no right to be that charming, considering the circumstances.

"I don't think I will be able to," he said, and there was a certain fragility to his voice that John had never heard before. It worried him.

"Okay, don't faint or something."

Sherlock suddenly took a very firm grip on his wrist, knuckles going white, and stared big-eyed and scared into his face.

"Do you mean it?" he asked.

"What?"

"You said that you love me. Do you mean it?"

John borrowed his face in his free hand. Only Sherlock would make a situation like this even worse. He had blurted out the dreaded L-word in the spur of the moment. And while he had meant it, he wasn't sure he would be able to own up to it when confronted like this.

"Yes. I mean it," he replied testily. "Of course I do."

"I have noticed you watching me lately," said Sherlock quietly. "I tried to convince myself that I was mistaken, that it was just a figment of my stunted mind, because I... you must have noticed how I have been watching you these last months."

"Sherlock?"

"You haven't noticed? Really? I thought it must have been so obvious," he continued. "John, why do you think I came back to you in the first place? Why I didn't just disappear all together? I couldn't function without you; I couldn't think without you. Believe me, I have tried. I simply need to be where you are."

John went still inwardly, emotionally. Hearing it like that made him put things together.

"What you said earlier about the case…" he began.

"Yes. I might have described my own situation a bit."

"So…" said John. He felt shaky and wide-eyed, and he was pretty sure he looked it too. He repressed the urge to just kiss the man right there and then, because he felt it would be taking too big steps too early. Which was kind of ironic, considering. Instead he opted for prying loose the hand that was still attached to his wrist, and to hold it with his own. He was hyperaware of Sherlock then, how his clammy hand felt in his, how he smelled, how their legs brushed together.

Repressing long needed kisses wouldn't cut it for long. John knew he'd bore of it sooner rather than later anyways. And since he figured Sherlock had even less of a clue of what to do in the situation, any taking of first steps would probably fall on him. He chuckled quietly.

"We could make this work, couldn't we?" John asked as he leaned in and planted the most chaste and promising of kisses on his mouth.

He took Sherlocks hitched breathing as a yes.

**THE END**

_(That's it, folks! Hope you enjoyed it!)_


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